Bibliophilia

[steepholm]

An exchange between sartorias and jade_sabre_301 in the comments to sartorias’s latest post has got me thinking about love. Book love, that is. Could it be, they were wondering, that fan ficcers are more attracted to books with flaws than to “perfect” books (Queen of Attolia was mentioned as an example of the latter), where you can do nothing but stand back and admire their awesomeness?

Sounds plausible to me. Moss grows in the fissures, where the perfectly smooth surface is sterile. But it’s got me wondering about the different kinds of love we can have for a book, and how these may relate to the different kinds of love we may have for a human being.

Let’s look at three types of human love (and I'm sticking to the romantic kind, to keep things "simple"):

a) You love someone because you think they're the bee's knees, and just about perfect. It's a kind of hero worship.

b) You love someone because you see the kind of person they could be, if only they'd believe in themselves, or take a bit more care about their appearance, or not drink so much, or learn to relax, etc. You see the best expression of your love as helping them to become the person they have the potential to be. (Yes, this is the fan fic equivalent, and yes, I’m aware there’s more to fan fic than this.)

c) You love someone, and while you see they have faults, you're prepared to accept them - and maybe even love them too, because after all we're all human, the faults are relatively minor, and you're more interested in loving a human being than a plaster saint.

Now, it’s quite possible to feel all three ways about the same human being, if not at the exact same moment then at least in rapid succession, and I think that good relationships may well be built on this triple foundation (with a rather more of b) and c) than of a), to be sure, though I’d hate to give up a) entirely, and with lady_schrapnell I've lucked out in that respect). Is that the case with books, too, or in the rather more one-sided relationship we have with them do we tend to opt for just the one kind of loving – where we love at all?

Comments

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Ah now, who says they're bad puns? And what's wrong with puns in the kinds of texts in which they appear, anyway? Mind you, I could see, the 'crap plays' (to quote the RSC!) might easily make you like the idea of Shakespeare more, as someone who could write them along with the amazing ones, but -- Cymbeline?

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

But... but... but.... I LIKE Cymbeline!! Beautiful language, and the broadest farce of a Jacobian revenge tragedy play imaginable! I think people take it much too seriously. If you treat it as a broad farce, it's FUNNY!


(Yes, and I love Shakespeare. ;-) )

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm in two minds about Cymbeline. It has beautiful bits, of course ("Fear no more," etc) - and personally I'm rather fond of Cloten: "We will nothing pay for wearing our own noses" is just the kind of thing I can see becoming a Revolutionary slogan in 1776. And it gives a fascinating glimpse of life in Milford Haven before the oil tankers. But all the same, it's hard to read without the phrase "Load of old tosh" flitting unbidden through one's head at least once. (From that point of view the only way to make it look good is to come at it right after Pericles.) And Posthumus must vie with Claudio and Bertram as one of the least sympathetic romantic heroes ever to get the girl.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Well, I was forced to take it seriously, as part of a rather disastrous section of a Shakespeare course - no fun, believe me! I bitched about all this to steepholm at the time and the exclusions for the nice poetry bits were understood. Still think it's one of the 'crap plays', but *somebody* has to like them. ;)

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

Actually, you do have my sympathy for it, because at the time I took the required Shakespeare course for my B.A., I too found it a drag. It seemed incredibly ponderous for a Shakespeare play, to me, at least.

Then, a couple of things happened. (1) I had to read The Changeling for a Doctoral qualifying exam, and the book it was in had an introduction about the Jacobean Revenge Tragedy formula. Murder, chastity tests, ghosts, poisons, hidden identities (I forget what else, would have to look it up). And I realized that what Shakespeare had done was see this genre come up (rather like slasher movies these days) with the formula, and he decided to do the Uber-revenge play (that is, Hamlet). And then he decided to turn the genre on its head, and spoof it (that being Cymbeline).

From the opening scene Cymbeline is a farce. My favorite signal for this is when Cornelius is dealing with the Queen, stepmother to the lovely princess, who has asked him to buy her some poison - so she can experiment on animals. He knows she means to poison the princess, so he gives her a sleeping potion. Later, the Queen gives the depressed Imogen the potion, telling the princess that it is a sleeping potion, thinking it will kill the girl. Imogen, not trusting the Queen, thinks it's a poison, but takes it anyway, because she is so depressed. With the result that her body is taken out to the forest, and she eventually finds Tweedledee and Tweedl--- I mean, Blockhead and Duff--- I mean, her long lost brothers. Heh. Nobody dies in the play EXCEPT the Queen and her son - the only two we WANT to die.

When you have a scene where a man sneaks his way into a woman's locked bedroom, finds her asleep - and this a woman he longs for -- and all he does is stand there and rhapsodize about her beauty, including mentioning the Rape of Lucrece, yet takes ONLY the ring her husband gave her -- you can't take it seriously. Because the whole point of his gaining the ring at all was to prove to Posthumus that Imogen was not faithful. Except that she is faithful.

Anyway, the second thing that happened (2) was seeing the production of the play for the complete BBC cycle. I realized what the problem was: because the language/poetry is so good, and because it's SHAKESPEARE, it gets treated with reverence even if the company can't understand why: solemn and stately. But it needs to be played with absolutely NO reverence. It needs to be way over the top broad and silly. Poshumus should be the stiffest stuff shirt ever (because why would anyone kick out such a "worthy" son-in-law just because he's of humble origins?).

It's become a passion of mine (obviously, sorry! heh) -- I desperately want to be involved in staging a production that does indeed go way over the top. I think it would be a rollicking, smashing success.

Back on topic -- love of books (or in this case, a play) -- for me, obviously, it's a case of me (at least) looking at the grubby match girl sitting in soot and garbage and realizing she's actually quite lovely.

[tetkamorovja.livejournal.com]

Wow - I have now got to read this play!

Your description of it, and how it should be staged, reminded me of when I read Thomas Mann's Holy Sinner. I had always been led to believe that Mann had no sense of humour, until I read that - it had me laughing outloud.

Can't help but feel that our response to a book, and what we say about it, says more about us than about the text ...